Page 68 of Forty

An hour or so later, a loud thwack and crack, followed by another and another in rapid succession, startles me awake. The bed is empty. I run to the French doors, grabbing my dirty T-shirt from the chair where Forty folded and stacked it neatly with my jean shorts earlier.

The moon is high, and it’s almost as bright as day in the backyard. Forty’s at the fence separating his house and the empty lot. He’s chopping it down with an ax.

Moonlight glides along the rippling muscles of his arms. Thwack. Crack. Splinter. A patch of fence sways and then falls, dangling from a post. Thwack. Crack. There goes the post.

I pad down the stairs and cross the lawn, cold dew numbing my bare toes, until I get a few yards away.

He’s got his earbuds in. I can hear the death metal from where I stand.

His expression is pure fury, his teeth bared, sweat dripping down his temples, his hair poking up all over as if he’s been driving his fingers through it.

I bend and grab a shard of fence and toss it gently at his bare back to get his attention. He turns, taps off his phone. His chest is heaving.

I work my arms inside my T-shirt and hug myself for warmth. “So. You, ah, doing a little demo work?”

He lowers his gaze, chagrined, and he tries to school his expression but rage is etched in every line of his face and in the burn in his eyes. “I’m giving you more of a view.”

He’s managed to knock down a good eight feet already.

“You need help?”

“You don’t have shoes on. You’ll get splinters in your feet. Go back to bed.”

“I can’t sleep. There’s an idiot demolishing a fence out here.”

Forty’s head drops back ‘til he’s staring blindly at the sky. The ax falls with a thud in the grass. “I can’t stand it. I can’t stand that I didn’t stop it.”

“Yeah. Me too. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t ever be sorry.”

“Don’t try and boss me.” I stretch the T-shirt over my knees and sit, cross-legged, on the ground.

“I left you.” His voice hurts me; it’s so tormented with guilt.

“You didn’t know.”

He shakes his head as if that doesn’t matter at all. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Lots of reasons.” I pick through the wreckage from that time, try to pick what will hurt him the least. “Mostly I didn’t want you to stop loving me.”

“I would have never stopped loving you.”

I don’t know. He wouldn’t havewantedto feel differently. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“No. I wouldn’t have.” He stoops, grabs the ax, and swings at a board.

“How do you know?”

Thwack. Slats crack. “’Cause I love you now.”

Well. Okay. I rock back, T-shirt stretching as it hugs my knees. My butt’s wet and cold, but my chest is glowing.

“Are you gonna tear this whole fence down?”

“Yeah.” He pauses mid-swing. “Unless it bothers you.”

“No, go on. I’ll watch.”

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